It is by reducing the scope of our inquiry that we can better
improve the accuracy of our data. The reduction is to locally
financed expenditures by institutes whose primary function is
R&D. We have observed that it is these expenditures that are
reported by African governments in response to the questionnaires
of international agencies like UNESCO (UNESCO, 1990). For R&D
institutes, the coverage may be nearly complete, for they are
relatively few in number and resident, almost all, in the public
sector. As a consequence, their budgets may be collected and
published as a regular part of governmental statistical
programmes.

Our data on the expenditures of public R&D institutes are
presented in Tables 7.4 and 7.5. For Uganda, the institutes have
been all in the agricultural sector; for the other countries they
have operated in other sectors as well. The raw data in the first
four columns of Table 7.4 are not very revealing, but the data in
the second four columns of the Table, and in Table 7.5, are. Let
us examine government expenditures on the R&D institutes in
terms of constant prices (of 1987). Those for Ghana approximately
doubled, in 1986/7, from their previous rate; those for Kenya
seem to have doubled also in 1990/1 (although there is only one
year's observation to support this statement); those for Tanzania
have fluctuated without any noticeable trend; and those for
Uganda were restored to respectable amounts in 1989/90. For three
countries out of the four, therefore, in recent years increased
public support, in terms of increased funds, has been afforded to
the R&D institutes.

Table 7.5, in which total public expenditures are noted,
places these increases in support for R&D institutes in
perspective. The first four columns of the table list total
government expenditures, the second four columns the percentages
of these totals expended on the R&D institutes. Examining the
trends within countries, the percentages are upwards, generally
from one plateau to a higher one, the ascensions occurring in
1982/3 for Ghana, 1990/1 for Kenya, 1986/7 for Tanzania and
1988/9 for Uganda. The rises amounted to an approximate doubling
in the cases of the first three countries, and a multiplication
of roughly twenty-fold in the last. Comparing the figures across
countries, on their higher plateaux, the differences appear to
vary with the absolute level of GDP: Kenya is consistent across
the years, allocating the largest percentage of its current
government expenditures to its R&D institutes, Ghana the
second largest, and Tanzania the third, and Uganda the smallest.
This is an unsurprising result, holding generally across
countries of similar sizes at all levels of GDP.

Table 7.6 gives us our first opportunity to extend our
analysis beyond the four countries of our Sub-Saharan sample. For
a few other countries comparable data are available on
expenditures of R&D institutes; these data are divided into a
first category, those appropriate for countries which, at the
time the data were collected, were also undergoing Structural
Adjustment, and a second category of countries, for those which
were not undergoing Structural Adjustment. The observations are
few and scattered, both geographically and chronologically, but
they do yield much the same variety of behaviour as do the four
countries in our sample. Looking at public expenditures per
capita, UNESCO's sample of countries has generally higher figures
than ours, although the range from lowest to highest is about the
same (US$0.2 per capita to 6.4, compared to 0.05 to 1.15).

Table 7.4 Public expenditures on R&D institutes in
Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda (in units of the national
currency, at current and constant prices) 1978/9-1991/2

Table 7.5 Total public current expenditures of Ghana,
Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and the percentages claimed by public
R&D institutes 1978/9-1991/2

Fiscal Year

Total
government current expenditures (billions in constant
prices of 1987)

Public
expenditures of R&D institutes as % of total
government current expenditure

Ghana
(Cedis)

Kenya
(KSh)

Tanzania
(TSh)

Uganda
(USh)

Ghana

Kenya

Tanzania

Uganda

1978/9

84.3

12.0

31.5

14.3

0.58

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

1979/80

85.0

19.4

30.6

8.90

0.51

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

1980/1

65.2

20.0

25.0

5.60

0.47

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

1981/2

58.0

20.0

22.4

7.04

0.58

n.a.

n.a.

0.015

1982/3

35.0

25.0

23.0

16.4

1.09

n.a.

n.a

0.008

1983/4

32.9

23.7

23.3

19.8

0.91

n.a.

0.45

0.005

1984/5

54.0

23.9

25.7

20.7

0.54

n.a.

0.52

0.003

1985/6

79.2

24.9

26.8

15.4

0.72

n.a.

0.47

0.004

1986/7

102

26.5

27.5

11.6

1.04

1.01

0.74

0.006

1987/8

111

30.0

25.0

8.0

1.71

1.36

0.74

n.a.

1988/9

118

31.5

22.6

10.4

0.92

1.49

0.66

0.27

1989/90

68

36.3

23.4

12.8

2.68

1.32

0.82

0.43

1990/1

74

31.1

23.8

17.9

1.51

1.92

0.66

0.31

1991/2

72

n.a.

35.5

40.0

1.00+

n.a.

0.44

0.068

Sources:
Total Government Current Expenditures: Tables 3.8,
(1978/9-1988/9, government current expenditure;
1989/90-1991/2, government consumption), 4,8,5.1, and 6.4,
all converted to constant prices of 1987 by the GDP deflators
in Tables 3.1, 4.1, 5.1 and 6.1
Total Public Expenditures of R&D Institutes: Table 7.4

Another, perhaps more revealing, way of comparing the
different countries' expenditures on R&D is to place next to
each other, in pairs, the local expenditure of one country
undergoing Structural Adjustment and another, similar country,
not undergoing Structural Adjustment. (This is the method of
comparison used by Harrigan and Mosley, 1991, in their evaluation
of the macro-economic effects of the World Bank's lending
activities.) Of the four countries in our sample, we pair Ghana
with Benin, Kenya with Nigeria, Tanzania with Gabon and Uganda
with Burundi and Rwanda (taken together). If we make these
pair-wise comparisons we find Ghana's own contributions to its
R&D institutes are inferior to Benin's on grounds of both US
dollars per capita and percentages of GDP, and Uganda's are
inferior to the sum of Burundi's and Rwanda's on all three
grounds represented in Table 7.6. Tanzania's contributions are
only 10 per cent of those of Gabon in terms of US dollars per
capita, but are greater in terms of percentage of GDP. Kenya's
exceed Nigeria's on all three grounds. Thus, for two of the four
countries in our own sample of countries undergoing Structural
Adjustment, public expenditures on R&D are less, for one
more, and for the final one intermediate, to expenditures of
paired countries not undergoing Structural Adjustment. The
comparisons seem to be so few and so diverse that we can draw no
conclusions. Disappointed we must be at the paucity of results,
but that is only a reflection of the paucity of data, in addition
to those that we have collected. Perhaps there are other ways of
presenting our aggregate data that will be more fruitful.

R&D institutes are not the only public bodies advancing
science and technology; educational bodies also fulfil that
function. Let us now consider them as well. The data needed to
determine whether or not government expenditures on advancing
science and technology overall have changed, and if so, in which
direction, have been retrieved from the individual country
chapters, and collected in Table 7.7. The figures on expenditures
on advancing science and technology are the sum of those spent by
the governments on their own research institutes (but not those
spent by the para-statals on theirs) plus those spent on
scientific and technical education, primarily the budgets of the
science and engineering faculties of the universities. These sums
are then compared with total government expenditures and their
ratios calculated.

Table 7.6 Comparision of expenditures, total and pa capita,
on R&D institutes in African countries; averages of various
years 1982-1991

Category of country

Country

Years of
expenditurea

Average
annual public expenditure (millions of US dollars, at
current prices)

Average
annual public expenditure per capita (US dollars, at
current prices)

Average
annual public expenditure as % of GDP

Our sample

Ghana

1983-1991

6.4

0.47

0.13

Kenya

1987-1991

24.7

1.15

0.31

Tanzania

1986-1991

2.7

0.12

0.08

Uganda

1988-1991

0.8

0.05

0.02

Other countries
undergoingb structural adjustment

Madegascar

1988

n.a.

0.9

0.4

Mauritius

1989

1.2

6.4

0.3

Countries not
undergoingb structural adjustment

Benin

1989

n.a.

2.3

0.7

Nigeria

1987

21.4

0.2

0.1

Gabon

1986

n.a.

1.1

0.0

Burundi and
Rwanda

1989 and 1985

2.5

1.1

0.4

Sources:
Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda: Tables 7.4 (Expenditures);
3.1, 4.1, 5.1 and 6.1 (exchange rates); and 3.2, 4.2, 5.2 and
6.2 (populations)
Others: UNESCO, 1990, Tables 5.10, and 5.19, and Appendix p.
A-12 (exchange rates vs US$).Notes:a: the initial years for Ghana and Tanzania are
those chosen by the World Bank as the dates Structural
Adjustment reforms began (Gulhati, 1988); for Tanzania (for
which the World Bank set a date of 1980) the initial year is
the first for which statistics on expenditures are available;
and for Uganda the initial year is that in which foreign
donations began to appear in substantial amountsb: as of the date when UNESCO's data were gathered

Given the ten years for which we have data, the figures in the
final four columns of Table 7.7 must be taken with some caution.
Looking at the experience of Ghana, we find considerable
fluctuations, between 0.8 and 5.8 per cent, for public
expenditures on science and technology relative to the totals.
Nonetheless Ghana's expenditures, on the average, exceed those of
both Kenya and Tanzania, which are stable at approximately 2 per
cent and 1.6 per cent respectively. Uganda's public expenditures
on science and technology are now reaching these percentages,
after years of neglect. Looking at all four countries we can
conclude that the expenditures in the different countries are now
of the same order of magnitude (roughly 2 per cent per year of
total government expenditures), and that the constraints placed
upon government expenditures by the conditions inherent in the
Structural Adjustment Programmes do not seem to have led to any
further restrictions on public funds allocated to the pursuit of
science and technology.